Top Five Ways Hosted SharePoint Improves Project Execution

In the past, collaboration was often very challenging, time consuming, and expensive.

In the past, collaboration was often very challenging, time consuming, and expensive. For one thing, people often had to travel great distances just to talk through the details of a project. In an optimal situation this might mean a drive across town and the loss of only a day. More typically it meant the hassle of a cross country flight, and the better part of a week or more in lost productivity, not to mention the expense of a round trip ticket and hotel stay. And that’s just the beginning.

Here’s an example of how it would take place: the project manager from the home office on the East Coast flies out to the engineering team on the West Coast. Monday is a lost day getting ready for the trip, getting meeting documents together and making whatever other arrangements needed to cover a week out of the office. Tuesday is a travel day, so if our hapless project manager is lucky, they’ll get to the West Coast office just about in time for everyone to head out. Wednesday is a meeting day, but only half of the people needed are actually in the meetings, because no one had the correct schedule. Adding to the confusion, the 50-plus pages of printed meeting documents are wrong, the numbers are all from an earlier analysis. The Thursday meetings go slightly better, but by this time things are badly off track, and anyway there’s an afternoon flight back home to worry about. By Friday our poor project manager is back in the office, exhausted and with only half of the goals for the trip accomplished, and at tremendous time and expense. Seems crazy, right?

Unfortunately that scenario is still very common for SMBs that have to collaborate with geographically distant teams. It’s a “sneaker-net” mentality that can bleed budgets and drag out project execution, two things that smart businesses simply can’t afford in a down economy. The solution for this is Hosted SharePoint.

1) People oriented computing

The secret to any successful project is good communication. With hosted SharePoint, people can work from the same documents, communicate tasks and report on progress with blog and wiki tools, and manage the project workflow across all the involved teams.

2) Collaborative workspaces

Avoid delays due to scheduling conflicts with collaborative workspaces and social networking tools that allow both “real time” interaction and “any time” collaboration. With SharePoint users can work together despite time zone and geographic obstacles that would otherwise slow progress.

3) Content Management

Put an end to version management headaches by creating and managing all relevant documents, task lists, and web based content from a centralized platform. Hosted SharePoint includes workflow tools and rights management to eliminate confusion and speed project execution. SharePoint is integrated with Microsoft Office applications for easy adoption into existing work habits.

4) Easy Information Access

SharePoint lets you build portals that can be customized for each user or team, and deliver exactly the content they need quickly and efficiently. By taking a ‘people first’ approach, you can take advantage of individual work styles and allow people to work in the manner they find most comfortable and productive.

5) Enterprise Class Tools

SharePoint gives you powerful information collection and analysis tools that not only make project execution more efficient, but they allow businesses to fine tune their processes in an ongoing basis. Easily design and create web based forms to input information directly into business applications, integrate enterprise grade search tools, and built in analysis and reporting tools allow clear communication throughout the organization.

If you’re wasting time, energy, and money on “sneaker-net” approaches to collaboration, it’s time to consider a hosted SharePoint solution. Low cost of entry, fully scalable architecture, and superior reliability, availability, and performance all make hosted SharePoint the right choice. Whether it’s collaboration between a handful of people across town or hundreds of people around the world, hosted SharePoint can have a dramatic impact on your project delivery.


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